These are the best Super Bowl commercials you didn't see

Do you live in a cat-themed market, defined as a town with a feline-centric name like Kitty Hawk, Pawnee City or Los Gatos? If so, you saw BuzzFeed’s first television commercial during yesterday’s Super Bowl XLIX.

If you weren’t among those viewers in select areas of California, Nebraska and North Carolina, we’ll save you the work of searching for the sweet-and-sardonic ad, dubbed “Dear Kitten,” online. (You can watch it below).

It was one of a growing number of local and regional ads that drifted off the Big Game hype without ponying up the $4.5 million for 30 seconds of NBC’s broadcast airtime.

“It’s still not free,” said Jeremy Seibold, creative director at TDA_Boulder, an agency that created a memorable two-part campaign for client FirstBank that aired in Colorado and Arizona. “But to customers in those areas, it’s a Super Bowl ad alongside all those other big national brands.”

The cost for regional and local spots could run into the millions, though Seibold declined to say how much FirstBank spent on its campaign, which was filmed in Los Angeles.

Nearly all the brands that advertised during the game had extensive social media programs around the spots, and most regional advertisers released extended versions and behind-the-scenes tidbits on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram.

In case you missed them, here are some regional ad highlights:

“Dear Kitten: Regarding the Big Game”

“Dear Kitten” is already a popular web series from BuzzFeed and its partner Friskies. It features an older, wiser house cat (voiced by BuzzFeed’s Ze Frank) showing the ropes to an impossibly adorable kitten.

For the Super Bowl spot, BuzzFeed’s first foray into television, wizened kitty makes fun of all the game day rituals of the humans who gather around “the light box” to scream, stuff their faces and chest bump. His goal, as always, is to annoy the people enough to score Friskies snacks for him and his green compatriot. Hint: it always works.

Puppy Sale

Charlie

FirstBank and its ad agency TDA_Boulder wanted to run with the big dogs, so they drafted the cutest puppy and the cutest kid for a two-part ad campaign to tout the financial institution’s new money transfers.

Boy wants dog. Boy doesn’t get dog. Cue tears? While the kid actor is great at showing us his crushing disappointment – the puppy went to another buyer while his dad fumbled around at the ATM – it’s really OK. Nine-year-old Charlie Greenleaf tells us, in the second part of the ad, to dry our eyes. He’s touched by our concern and all, but it’s just an ad, you guys. See? All pretend. All good.

GrubHub, “Burrito”

What is this, 1995? Why in the world would you consider calling a restaurant, speaking to an actual person to order food? Luddite! Use the free GrubHub app or a flying burrito will smack you right upside the head.

The commercial aired in five markets –- Los Angeles, San Francisco, Baltimore, Md., Miami and Washington D.C. -– but will live on via social media because of its impact (pun intended). Wacky and fun, it gets the point across that trying to get food the old fashioned way is just silly.

A second spot, called “Wrong Order,” perfectly illustrates the frustration of getting a bologna sandwich when you really wanted a Cobb salad. How wrong is that? Wrong enough to go chasing after the delivery guy? Well, some of us may have more stamina than others, especially on an empty stomach. The ads, which ran in five markets, came from Barton F. Graf 9000 in New York.

“Wrong Order”

Eat24

Pairing Snoop Dog, king of the stoners, with food makes perfect sense in most any ad anytime. Toss in Gilbert Gottfried? Sure, why not?

Everybody knows the mashup word, “hangry,” which describes that low blood sugar, lightheaded hungry plus angry feeling. Gottfried supplies the unreasonable part in this 30-second spot, throwing tantrums because his tummy is growling, while Snoop just chills and orders some egg rolls from the Eat24 app.

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